Royal commission into child sexual abuse: School principal considered theft, not sexual abuse, as crime

A senior Catholic Marist Brother said it never occurred to him that kissing and cuddling children in a locked room amounted to sexual abuse.

Brother Anthony Hunt has given evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Canberra.

He was the deputy principal of a school at Lismore in northern New South Wales during the 1980s and was also in charge of the the local Marist Brothers Community.

The community included the now convicted paedophile Brother Gregory Sutton.

Brother Hunt said he received allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Brother Sutton during the 1980s but did not report them, in part, because he did not think the sexual assault of children was a crime.

"At that time I did not associate it with the word 'crime'," he said.

Commissioner Jennifer Coate quizzed Brother Hunt on whether he fully understood what he was saying.

Commissioner Coate: "So as deputy principal of a school in charge of 600 children, that's your evidence to the royal commission that in 1985 you did not know that the sexual assault of children was a crime?"

Brother Hunt: "I would have regarded it as a very serious matter, but I have to say, yes, the word 'crime' did not enter my awareness."

Commissioner Coate: "Did you know that theft was a crime?"

Brother Hunt: "Yes, certainly."

Brother Hunt told the Commission that he regrets his naivety at the time and was sorry for the "great harm that has been done to children".

Church official defends policy of not taking allegations to police

The inquiry also heard from another senior Catholic Church official who has again defended the policy of not taking allegations of sexual abuse to the police.

But Father Brian Lucas told the royal commission it would be unfair to suggest the church's policy was to help cover-up such crimes.

"The word 'cover-up' is used extensively without much realisation of the dilemma that we were faced with," he said.

"It was for victims to make that call (to the police) and we respected their call.

"But to suggest that respecting the right of a victim not to go to the police amounts to a cover-up is something I completely reject."

Father Lucas, a former lawyer, was involved in drafting the church's policy in 1992 to respond to allegations of sexual abuse and he also took charge of many internal investigations into such complaints.

He said if the allegations were of child sexual abuse then mandatory reporting requirements would be taken into account, but where they did not exist, the church would leave reporting to the police with the family.

The Catholic Church has said it updated its policy in 2009 to require the mandatory "blind" reporting of all alleged sexual assaults.

During the hearing Father Lucas was also repeatedly forced to defend a deliberate decision not to take notes when interviewing accused priests or brothers.

"If the person won't talk to you because you are sitting in front of him with a pen in hand, there's not going to be a note in any event," he said.

It was put to Father Lucas that such a decision could be perceived as hampering the course of justice and helping the church deny responsibility if the case was ever prosecuted.

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